Helen
by MarbleGlove
Summary: According to the stories, Helen of Troy had a face that launched a thousand ships. According to Tarazov family lore, Helen Pantazis was John Wick's Helen of Troy. John thought she was closer to being prince charming to his Cinderella. She got him out.


**The Beginning**

"Not many people recognize me in this neighborhood," John said as he sat down on the other side of the outdoor café table she was at. He came to this neighborhood specifically because he didn't expect to be recognized here.

"No, I don't suppose they do." It was her calm as much as her recognition that had drawn his attention.

"How do you?"

She sipped her tea as she contemplated her response. "I used to work as a… party favor, for one of the families."

"As a prostitute."

"Mmm. That too. But mostly as a party favor. That is how I recognized you."

Which made sense. Most of the family parties had at least three prostitutes per guest. The women draped as, well, as party favors over the backs of chairs and the like. Witnesses to everything but generally too well paid or too high or both to care. It was all very decorative and he'd never given it much thought until he tried to reconcile that image with the woman in front of him.

"But you're not anymore?"

"No. It paid me enough to get through school. I don't make nearly as much in a day anymore, but I'm a lot less likely to be collateral damage, or used unto destruction, in my current job."

"Which is?" He kind of wondered, even as he was asking, why she would ever answer him. If she had any sense, she would want as little to do with him as possible.

"I'm a guidance counselor."

"Huh. Are you in a position to give advice on good career paths?" He winced. He hadn't intended to be as rude as it came out. He just wasn't used to talking to, well, people.

She narrowed her eyes but didn't back down. "I know what questions to ask to get people to figure out what they want out of life, yes."

He had never given much thought to what he wanted from life. He wanted but didn't know how to even figure out what it was that he wanted. He just wanted. He didn't respond and she took that as an invitation to continue. He wasn't entirely sure he hadn't intended it as an invitation.

"There's not one right career path or best goal or final success. There's just figuring out what you want, what it will take to achieve what you want, and whether what you want is worth what you'd have to do to get there."

And this time, he really was frozen. Because that was remarkably close to his own process with any assassination: identify the goal, figuring out what's necessary to accomplish the goal. He didn't have the last part though: asking if it was worth it. Asking that wasn't his job.

Not asking that type of question was also why he had been walking through is particular neighborhood, not expecting to recognize or be recognized by anyone.

He was told what his goals were, and he figured out how to accomplish them, but he never set the goals and he never asked, himself or anyone else, if it was worth it.

He sat frozen in his chair, and she drank her tea. She didn't even have a book out. She just sat in the sun and slowly drank her tea and thought her thoughts behind her eyes. She had the kind of peace, sitting here at a sidewalk cafe, that he only achieved while focused on an assassination. She'd found some way to set a goal for her life that was more than just one more dead body.

He went into the cafe and ordered a coffee for himself. It took a few minutes to order and pay and receive the coffee, but she was still at her table when he returned. He'd wondered if she would take the opportunity to leave. It would have been the smart move. And yet, he certainly didn't think her presence meant she wasn't smart. They continued to sit in silence. She was nursing the dregs of her tea, and he realized she was waiting for him.

He had to cough to clear his throat when he finally spoke. "Ask me what I want."

"What do you want?"

"I want you."

Her eyebrows raised, but she was otherwise relaxed. She was watchful but not wary. "You're a handsome man. You can probably get me."

"Not for a night. For a wife." He had sat down at her table half an hour ago. He knew nothing about her except that she had the determination to get in bed with the mob, save the money she earned, get out again, and still look at peace with herself. He wanted that. "What will it take to get what I want?"

She didn't answer immediately and he was relieved. Instead, she looked at him, and swirled her the dregs of her tea some more, and looked at her hands, and finally looked back at him. "I can imagine myself being a wife to John Wick. But I can't marry Baba Yaga. I'm sorry."

He knew exactly what she meant. She could make a life for him outside of the mob. She could open up her life and make a place for him there. But she wouldn't follow him back into the mob.

"Will you marry me if I stop being Baba Yaga?"

She shook her head. "I don't want to be widowed before I'm even married."

He forced himself to think about it. To think through what it would take to leave. Because she was right, Viggo Tarazov would rather see him dead than independent from the family. What did he want, what was he willing to do to get it, would it be worth it. It was a new way of thinking, but he was very good at learning new skills quickly, and making plans even quicker. He already had the start to one. "I can make a deal.. One more job, and then I'd be out."

"There are stories about the last jobs assigned to assassins."

"Yes, there are. And this would be one of them. But I've got a goal. And I know how to achieve it. And it will be worth it if you say yes."

She closed her eyes and swirled her tea and he could see her thinking. Thinking through the possibilities. Of saying yes and sending him to his death, of saying yes and sending a thousand other people to their deaths by his hand, of saying no and leaving him lost and without the guidance and goal he desperately needed. Of saying no and keeping herself completely separate from her past, or of saying yes and helping someone else get out too.

"I'll be bathed in blood, more even than I am right now. But it will be for the last time. Will you marry me afterwards?"

"I'm not a prize." Her smile was more a grimace than anything else. "In either meaning of the word."

"I don't set my own goals very often. Please let me have this goal. Let me come home to you rather than to them." He didn't beg, ever, and yet he found himself begging her. He needed an out and he didn't know how to get out on his own. Please let him crawl into her life like a boat on a sea he was drowning in. Please, let him use her as a reason to get out and a reason to stay out, and a guide for how to live while being out. It wasn't a fair request. She was a complete stranger to him, and yet, he could see his future at a crossroads just from meeting her.

Both paths were blood-soaked, but there was a light at the end of one path and just ever increasing darkness in the other direction.

She finally opened her eyes.

"Give me a pen."

He actually had a pen in his pocket that more often acted as a weapon than it did as a writing utensil. He offered it to her.

She wrote an address on one of the napkins.

"This is my home," she said. "My job is a year contract that will conclude in seven months. My lease is up in nine months. If you can come to me while I still live there, without trailing your enemies behind you, I'll marry you and take you with me, wherever I go."

"I'll be there." He memorized the address before folding the napkin and tucking it away in his shirt pocket along with his pen. He'd burn the napkin later, so no one else could see it, but he needed it for now, as a physical reminder when he returned to his own apartment that this had happened.

"I'll be waiting for you."

He forced himself to get up and leave. He had things he needed to do before he could return to her, to follow her into a new life.

But he had a goal now. And he knew how to achieve it. And it would be worth it.

**The End**

"I am so sorry, John."

He held her hand and bowed his head beside the hospital bed. It was a pose for praying but he didn't have it in him to pray to any god who would put his wife here. "No."

"I'm so sorry."

"No, it's not, you don't have to apologize for this." He should be the one apologizing. It was no more than he deserved, to have her taken from him, but she deserved so much more than to be his punishment.

"But it wasn't enough. It wasn't long enough. I made you change your whole life and…"

"You didn't make me do anything, you just asked the questions. Isn't that what you always say? And I. I had a goal, I did what it took to get it, and life has never been fair, but everything I did to get you, to get the life you gave me, for anytime at all, was worth it."

It had to be worth it. There was nothing else for him. Being her husband or the Tarazov family assassin were the only things he knew how to be. He had never been so alone as when she died, but even then she took care of him. She gave him a puppy. A puppy and a lifeline: a reason to get up in the morning and not just drown in darkness.


End file.
